Jobs are getting more competitive and wages don't match effort

[mumofthreehundred]

Is it just me or are jobs getting crazy competitive these days?

I lost out on an entry level job today because I didn't have enough experience. I'm a graduate, first class degree , with tonnes of experience just in a different sector. The job was so poorly paid there would be no national insurance. I was interviewed by a panel four people and spent hours filling in the longest form.

I just can't find much else out there that pays enough to cover my current situation (3 children in nursery, yes I had surprise twins)

There is so much competition these days that you can't afford to rock boat and ask for more money or flex working.

I'm trying to move out of my current sector but it just seems impossible these days.

I don't have time or money to retrain. See above for family situation!

I am sure I remember a time 15-20 years ago when it was so much easier to get a job. Drop your cv in, head to a recruitment agency etc. You could pick a professional career and there was a clear route in. I'm seeing a lot of jobs that are minimum wage and they should be more. Others require lots and lots of volunteering before you could be considered for a paid job. Or some extra qualification that costs a few grand to get.

Aibu or is the job situation getting out of hand for people like me?

There does seem to be a lot of hoops to jump through nowadays.

When I got my first entry-level job (fifteen years ago!) I sent off my CV, got a letter back with an interview date, turned up, had a fifteen minute interview and got the job.

Now at the same firm for the same job there's a skills test and first interview, second interview and then a third 'trial' afternoon.

Despite the additional hoops, we don't seem to have improved the quality of new employees, tbf, it's as hit and miss as it ever was, so a waste of everyone's time.

This is possibly the only thing that should improve after Brexit.

Not necessarily. Other EU countries have had decent wage growth over the last ten years, so being a member state doesn't preclude this. The Eastern European countries as a rule are booming, probably as the structural changes of membership are properly bedding in. Remember the transformation these economies have been through in the past couple of decades. Plenty of Western European countries also had good wage growth though: the Scandinavian countries and Germany, for example. These are countries with high immigration levels, so that's not a reason for poor wage growth.

The UK has had almost the worst growth in wages since the financial crisis. Prior to that, it had one of the highest levels of wage growth. I'm not an economist but I believe the poor level of productivity in the UK is one cause.

YANBU
Having a degree means v little - you need a degree to be a library assistant. Recruitment practices are often sexist and ageist. Retraining is prohibitively expensive and transferable skills aren't a thing - employers want very specific quals and experience. Career agility requires money and connections.

This is possibly the only thing that should improve after Brexit.

This is very unlikely. The leading candidates for the PM's job have consistently voted against improving the lot of workers - voting against minimum wages, unfair dismissal legislation and so on.

Raab, Truss and Patel even wrote a book about it - 'Britannia Unchained' describing how once free of the 'chains' of the EU, the UK would prosper. They are on record for saying that UK employees are amongst the laziest and worst workers in the world and that they should be more like their counterparts in India and the Far East if industries are to compete. They advocate removing all employee protections and abolishing the minimum wage in order to let 'the market' set the wage rates. At the same time, they are not bothered about the UK losing millions of jobs in manufacturing and agriculture - they positively advocate this happening in order to move the UK to a services-based economy.

All very good for the few people with the skills, but for the vast majority of people, this will mean squabbling over any job, at any wage, in order to stay afloat. This is already the case in many of the old industrial areas of the UK - yet somehow, these are the areas that have been persuaded to vote for more of the same pain.

Markets I follow - bilingual/trilingual fluency for 16k/year customer service jobs...

Teaching vet practice (including actually practicing and on call evenings and weekends), requests for post grad quals (cost £7k+ to do) and substantial experience - 32k in Surrey... so not exactly cheap to live. Similar to the starting salaries of a vet of the desired level of qualification (starting salaries have since reduced)

Experience required for minimum wage reception/admin (where's the progression?)

Non training NHS dr posts look pretty crap pay too given hours!

Not necessarily. Other EU countries have had decent wage growth over the last ten years, so being a member state doesn't preclude this.

True, but we have been one of only two fully Anglophone EU countries, which is what made us especially attractive. If Brexit goes ahead, Ireland will get a lot of the keen young arrivees we've been getting.

So we will lose out in many ways, but it is the one thing that also has a silver lining, in terms of the domestic labour supply drop meaning an end to 'oversupply'.

Depends on the job. Years ago I had a conversation with a colleague about how worthless degrees were going to become.

This was at a time when you only got a degree if you had to have one, think medicine, medical, legal, that sort of thing.

The problem now is that everybody has a "degree". Usually in some pointless, worthless subject. A degree in "media", come on! FFS! .

But people won't be told and they insist on "studying" for three years, scraping together 50 grand in "student" debt, then wander about, shoving their Unicorn turd of a "degree" in the faces of every interviewer they have the "opportunity" of impressing with their mythical educational achievements. These people are deluded enough to believe that their "degree" has the same influence and significance as say a medical qualification.

It's utter bollocks. But people think they should be considered as a serious candidate on the back of it all.

Now we are in a situation where the it's become virtually impossible to sort the potential from the waste. So employers have to come up with ever more ridiculous methods of interviewing candidates.

I have sit on interview panels at least once a month. It's becoming really concerning how delusional people, especially young people, have become. The best candidate we interviewed on my last panel was a 31 year old ex police officer. She had joined the police at 19 (without needing any degree) and left after ten years to work as a train conductor. She was fantastic. Night and day in comparison to the "degree dregs" which had nothing to show for themselves except a piece of paper.

Think about it, how can an employer rate a candidate when all the candidates are exactly the same?

It's just an endless list of "A* at A level, some gap year "adventure", followed by some generic "degree", a "work experience" history of a Saturday job as a "Barista" and "Club Promoter", with a little "marketing experience" (Sunday job in Top Shop).

Compare the above to that ex officer. They just arent even in the same league are they.

That's the problem. Entitlement. No work ethic, but plenty of "confidence".

I despare.

Agreed.

I work in a fairly specialist sector but don't have any particular qualifications to do it. Nowadays it's all degree, X experience, and starting salaries are barely over 20k. Less, sometimes.

I am very lucky, I got in at the right time when a bit of aptitude was all you needed. Wouldn't be able to get started now

Totally agree. I last had a paid job in 2004 before DCs. I sometimes had multiple job offers to choose from in the 1990s, all having submitted a simple cv and 1 interview and well paid enough to buy a property with x2 my annual salary.

Returning to the job market 15 years later, wages are the same, but the competition for min wage low skilled basic office jobs is insane. The skills and experience list often runs into 2 pages, they want the earth virtually for free.

Also the hours seen to have increased. I used to work 9-5 hour for lunch, paid, which was a proper lunch hour, not a quick sandwich at my desk. Now it's 9-6 with an unpaid lunch 'hour' and carry on answering emails and working from home in evenings weekends and during holidays!

We need a national strike and a workers revolution to increase pay.

Min wage needs to be at least £20 per hour to enable a reasonable basic standard of living given housing and transport costs and to stop the government having to top up the low wages being paid by the billion pound corporations who are siphoning off millions of pounds for the CEOs and funelling the rest of the profits to offshore tax havens.

No wonder our public services are so stretched and people can barely afford housing and food.

Raab, Truss and Patel even wrote a book about it - 'Britannia Unchained' describing how once free of the 'chains' of the EU, the UK would prosper. They are on record for saying that UK employees are amongst the laziest and worst workers in the world and that they should be more like their counterparts in India and the Far East if industries are to compete. They advocate removing all employee protections and abolishing the minimum wage in order to let 'the market' set the wage rates. At the same time, they are not bothered about the UK losing millions of jobs in manufacturing and agriculture - they positively advocate this happening in order to move the UK to a services-based economy.

Why does that poisonous triumvirate not surprise me?

One day the far right theoreticians will finally understand that humans are not marbles on a tray. Maybe

All very good for the few people with the skills, but for the vast majority of people, this will mean squabbling over any job, at any wage, in order to stay afloat.

I think we've already seen that, TBH. TESCO are still advertising mainly 15hpw 'flexi' contracts, even in more prosperous areas, and presumably they are still hiring enough staff that way. They do it to minimise their NI bill, and jobseekers are apparently desperate enough to accept it, even in a post-UC environment.

I have an issue with people saying degrees are "worthless". Ok, they may not be necessary to doing a particular job, but IMO the more highly educated people in a population, the better. Higher education is not only of worth in terms of what job you do. In the vast majority of degrees, you have to learn how to perform some research, use some critical thinking skills.

Yep this is totally a thing. It's very frustrating and unfair. There are so many people with degrees and lots of people under employed / over qualified for jobs. I’m not convinced Brexit will help. The cost of everything else seems to increase which doesn’t help

Currently my work are heavily encouraging me to move offices for a "promotion". But it's a pay cut as there would be no outer London weighting -promotion only pays another £400 a year. They are doing it to move resources around rather than advance my career. All kind of pointless for me really

Yes, someone cited ‘Britannia Unchained’ as the desired target for the proponents of a hard Brexit. What Raab and co want is workers to be at the complete mercy of the market. No rights, rules or regulations. I’m other words no ‘red tape’. Capitalism on steroids.

If you think things are hard now see what happens over the next decade after Brexit. The weakened economy will be used as an excuse to increase austerity. We will then be told that the country needs to be more ‘competitive’ to get out of austerity. ‘’Red tape’ will have to be removed e.g. workers rights, fire at will will be introduced to keep us in line.

This won’t matter to the likes of the leading Brexit fans because their kids will be on prestigious graduate programmes, the city or they’ll be business or land owners. It’s the rest of us who will have to bow and scrape to our employers, terrified of taking a day off sick, having to rely on state top ups (graduate or not) to pay for food, our jobs tied to our healthcare insurance so we can’t leave who will suffer. Zero hours contracts will be the norm even if you have a masters in 3 languages.

Someone posted a job on Facebook the other day - at an airport an hour away so difficult to get to, nights, weekends, shifts and 4am starts - for minimum wage. Horrendous. The cost of getting to the airport each day (and running the car needed to do that) would take a big chunk of that.

I have an issue with people saying degrees are "worthless". Ok, they may not be necessary to doing a particular job, but IMO the more highly educated people in a population, the better.

I couldn't disagree with this more.

A lot of degrees these days would be absolutely trounced by commensurate time spent good range of books and waiting tables for three years.

And if when the time comes my own two middle-class kids (teenagers) prove not to be university material, I will tell them to wait tables (or similar) and read books for three years instead.

Anyone who denies the role of decades of high immigration and globalisation must be a fantasist. It is not the only factor but it does play a significant role.

In my first career it was very difficult to get a graduate job at the time because there was an influx of graduates with 1-2 years of industry experience from Australia / NZ / SA who were willing to work for grad salaries, so companies took the English speaking non-English applicant option over the English grad with no experience.

At the moment I am applying for NHS training roles in a different sector that are highly competitive, partly because anyone in the EU can apply for them so it of course means that there are fewer positions for British applicants. It would be interesting to know how many EU graduates on these training schemes continue to work for the NHS after being trained here at tax payers expense. Of course the data will exist but its not possible to find it.

Why do other countries with higher immigration levels (like Germany) have decent levels of wage growth the givemesteel?

Brexit might mean a short term help with fewer applicants, but that ignores the likely economic downturn that will follow once we are a small nation with limited trading power.

We're already losing jobs, and unless we reach a good deal more will follow. Therefore we'll still see huge competition, because even with fewer immigrants, the rest of us will be competing for fewer jobs.

Not to mention, the type of jobs we are losing are HQ type jobs, and the type of jobs that immigrants are disproportionately likely to take are minimum wage.

So yes, there may be slightly more opportunities if you are keen on fruit picking. Less if you wanted to be a manager or a policy maker or a higher level admin assistant.

It's just an endless list of "A at A level, some gap year "adventure", followed by some generic "degree", a "work experience" history of a Saturday job as a "Barista" and "Club Promoter", with a little "marketing experience" (Sunday job in Top Shop)*

I find this interesting. On a thread about young mums your average middle class MNer was saying that your early 20s should follow the very path you describe above! Maybe therein lies the problem. Too many people following that path and not considering anything else.

I had a friend recently who completed her masters. Late 20’s, no ties, should be highly employable. She ended up working in Boots. It was all she could get, and this is in London! Apparently she was told she was overqualified for most things she went for. Now she’s taking her masters off her CV and trying again! Another guy I know with a masters is a cleaner.

I was lucky. I joined a scheme in 2005 for my job where the degree was part of the training, all paid for by the employer. At the end of the training you were guaranteed a job. Now you need a degree before you apply, plus tons of work experience in the field. Which means taking a low paid unqualified role in the organisation for at least 2 years. So you’re talking 5 years before you can even begin the training now.

Things are definitely getting a lot harder and for lower pay.

A lot of degrees these days would be absolutely trounced by commensurate time spent good range of books and waiting tables for three years.

I don't deny this, but the likelihood is most people don't read a good range of books. At least doing a degree obliges you to do a range of reading that many people otherwise wouldn't do.

Givemesteel Here's some figures- a significant % of NHS doctors & some specialist surgeons

If they leave, waiting lists will increase
It would take several years to train suitable replacements

Dippy

Most Degrees are worthless. It's just a money making scam. How can a three year degree in "Hotel and Hospitality" or "Media Studies" be considered "higher education" ?

Or education of any sort really.

No offence, but you have just demonstrated the delusional ethos of the candidates I have to interview. A Degree, a real Degree, qualifies you to work in a specific role, Doctor, Dentist, Engineer, for example. A Degree in (insert random subject chosen because the person liked the city more than the Uni) is of no use to me when selecting a candidate.

As for "critical thinking", a Mickey Mouse "Degree" from some obscure Uni just demonstrates the LACK of critical thinking on behalf of the candidate. It's counterproductive.

"Please hire me, I'm so frekin intelligent that I chose to study a pointless subject, to get a pointless Degree, so that I could apply for this entry level, minimum wage position, which has absolutely no connection to my Degree subject".

I don't deny this, but the likelihood is most people don't read a good range of books. At least doing a degree obliges you to do a range of reading that many people otherwise wouldn't do.

What on earth are people who wouldn't read a good range of books in the absence of obligation doing at university?

Exactly DippyAvacado. Germany has more immigration but wages rise. I don’t buy the immigration angle. It’s a convenient target for blame. In the UK the gap between boss and worker pay is shooting up. British workers are being shafted because of ideology.